The new 0.4 version of Etoile had just been released. Etoile intends to be an innovative, GNUstep-based, user environment built from the ground up on highly modular and light components.
It is created with project and document orientation in mind, in order to allow users to create their own workflow by reshaping or recombining provided Services (aka Applications) and Components. 0.4 is a developer-targeted release on its way towards this goal. As a developer-focussed release, this predominantly consists of frameworks.
A few demonstration applications are also included.

while i agree with you on the stake of GNUstep, this project itself is still only at a 0.4 state, and isnt moving quickly (lack of time for development and man power). So to think of a bridge to KDE and Gnome and all that jazz at this point to them makes little sense so much as getting there back end stable and feature complete. of course i cant speak for the devs personaly, i just know where my priorities are when coding for my projects.